i’m not good at explaining but i’ll try to say enough without spoiling it. (bcuz i accidentally spoiled a lot for myself when i was getting into it)
okay so basically in dmc you play (mostly) as dante who is a demon hunter and he himself is half demon half human so he has crazy cool ass abilities. and in the dmc universe they talk about this war against humans and demons that happened centuries ago and how one powerful demon known as sparda fought with the humans and saved them and closed the gate between humans and demons, but this story is now regarded as a legend bcuz it happened so long ago, anyways sparda is dante’s dad. and yearssss later after sparda chose live a human so then we get dante and his twin brother vergil, but then the guy who sparda beats comes back for revenge and attacks them and kills their mom and the twins get separated, and dante lives his life as mercenary/demon hunter.
i recommend playing the games in order of release even tho dmc3 is a prequel but seeing the controls evolve is quite nice. but u can still start with 3 if u want and its like the best one. and people recommend skipping 2 and i agree, its not good and it adds nothing to the story.
(also fun fact dmc1 was originally re4! but the scrapped that and made a new concept)
this is a really messy plot explanation but i hope it makes sense